The results are in. Crimea "voted" 97% in support of leaving Ukraine and joining Russia. At least that is what the headlines say. The other 3% voted to make Crimea autonomous and severing most ties with Ukraine.
I keep waiting to see the articles that explain what a farce this vote was. Shouldn't America know that Crimea is 60% ethnic Russians but 25% ethnic Ukrainians (most of the rest are Tatars). Are we really to believe that the quarter of the people who are Ukrainian voted to return to being dominated by Russia? Have the Ukrainians in Crimea come to so dislike their fellow Ukrainian Catholics in Kiev that they yearn for the yoke of the Orthodox Russians in Moscow? And what of the eighth of the population that is composed of Tatars? Do these people whose ancestors were conquered by the Russians come to look longingly at Moscow and unanimously hope to be conquered again?
The truth is that the ethnic makeup of Crimea tells us clearly that the "vote" yesterday was completely phony. The truth is that had the result been 75% to 25% it would have had much more credibility than the 97 to 3 farce that Putin arranged. Yesterday's vote was in the grand tradition of elections in North Korea which are always unanimous in support of the leader.
I keep waiting to see the articles that explain what a farce this vote was. Shouldn't America know that Crimea is 60% ethnic Russians but 25% ethnic Ukrainians (most of the rest are Tatars). Are we really to believe that the quarter of the people who are Ukrainian voted to return to being dominated by Russia? Have the Ukrainians in Crimea come to so dislike their fellow Ukrainian Catholics in Kiev that they yearn for the yoke of the Orthodox Russians in Moscow? And what of the eighth of the population that is composed of Tatars? Do these people whose ancestors were conquered by the Russians come to look longingly at Moscow and unanimously hope to be conquered again?
The truth is that the ethnic makeup of Crimea tells us clearly that the "vote" yesterday was completely phony. The truth is that had the result been 75% to 25% it would have had much more credibility than the 97 to 3 farce that Putin arranged. Yesterday's vote was in the grand tradition of elections in North Korea which are always unanimous in support of the leader.
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